Google Glass tech offers vision of the future

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold;">The wearable internet-connected gadget, not expected to hit the market until 2014, will retail for under $1,500.</span><br /><img src="http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2013/2/21/2013221173553943734_20.jpg" /><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;">The glasses will handle most of the same tasks as smartphones, but respond to voice commands </span><br /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><br /></span><br /><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">A new <a class="InternalLink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1uyQZNg2vE" style="color: #fb9d04; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">promo video</a> for its internet-connected glasses technology known as <a class="InternalLink" href="http://www.google.com/glass/start/" style="color: #fb9d04; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Google Glass</a> has given potential early adopters a chance to buy the as yet unreleased product.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">The video, posted on Wednesday, touted the wearable technology as one of the biggest advancements in personal computing in many years.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">In the video, people wore the glasses while skydiving, riding a rollercoaster, skiing, and swinging on a trapeze, but Tom Royal, editor of the London-based magazine <em>Popular Science UK</em>, cautioned that the product will require a great deal of investment and infrastructure.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">"It's going to require a huge investment around the world to make these things work" anytime and anywhere as the video purports, Royal told Al Jazeera.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Though he says the glasses come in "a clever looking, quite attractive package", Royal, like other analysts, said consumers should temper their expectations.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">"The danger of hyping something this much is that clearly the technology is far behind where the hype is right now," Rocky Agrawal of reDesign Mobile, said, adding, "there's a real danger of setting the expectations bar too high".</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">The glasses will handle most of the same tasks as smartphones, but respond to voice commands instead of fingers touching a screen.<br /><br />The glasses include a tiny display screen attached to a rim above the right eye and run on Google's Android operating system for mobile devices.<br /><br />Google has said the mass-market version of Google Glass will cost less than $1,500 - the price paid by an exclusive number of computer programmers last June - but more than a smart phone.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">The California-based company does not plan to start selling "Google Glass" in the mass market until 2014.</div></div>

Google Glass tech Google Glass tech offers vision of the future

The wearable internet-connected gadget, not expected to hit the market until 2014, will retail for under $1,500. The glasses will handle mos...

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